Newly Signed 2009 Bitcoin Block Reward Linked to Hal Finney’s Set of BTC Transactions – Bitcoin News

In late November, an unknown person signed a signature associated with an extremely old block reward mined on January 19, 2009, and the user published a message and verified signature associated with the reward on the bitcointalk.org forum. The message was linked to a bitcoin address associated with block 1,018, a block reward minted 16 days after Satoshi Nakamoto launched the network. Upon further investigation, onchain data shows that block 1018 is linked to a large number of block rewards apparently mined by Hal Finney, and the signed block is also linked to the very first bitcoin transaction originating from block 9.

Block 1018 signed by ‘Onesignature’ on November 26, 2022, is associated with Hal Finney’s mined bitcoins and the very first bitcoin transaction

On November 26, 2022, a newly created bitcointalk.org forum account called “Onesignature” shocked the crypto community when the unknown person signed a message related to block 1018. Onesignature’s message contained a new BTC address created in 2022, and the unknown person also signed the new the address in addition to proving the user’s existence.

The signed message, according to Bitcoin.com’s verification tool and an Electrum wallet, is an authentic signature linked to the 2009 address “1NChf” or block 1018. Block 1,018 and the bitcoin address 1NChf are both linked to the first BTC transaction that saw 10 BTC sent from Satoshi Nakamoto to Hal Finney and a good number of BTC blocks linked to Finney.

For example, on March 25, 2014, journalist Andy Greenberg published a story about Hal Finney’s life and his connection to bitcoin. In the article, Greenberg said he saw emails sent to Finney from Nakamoto and Jason Finney, Hal’s son, showed Greenberg his father’s BTC wallet showing the very first bitcoin transaction.

The first transaction was 10 BTC sent on January 12, 2009, and it was confirmed at block height 170. In addition to the 10 BTC sent to Finney that day, Satoshi sent four more transactions from block 9. Two transfers for 10 BTC and two transactions that sent a single bitcoin each.

Greenberg’s article shows a purported screenshot of Hal Finney’s wallet showing the 10 BTC transaction, but it also shows 12 block subsidies that Finney allegedly mined. The screenshot says that Finney claimed a reward on January 10, 2009. That was the same day that Finney told world that he was “running bitcoin” on the social media platform Twitter.

Runs bitcoin

— halfin (@halfin) 11 January 2009

Furthermore, block 78 is associated with Finney’s mined bitcoin rewards and his set of transactions. The block rewards depicted in Greenberg’s article, along with block 78 and the first 10 BTC transaction, are all linked to the 2009 address 1NChf that Onesignature signed on November 26. A deep dive into the first 1025 mined BTC blocks indicates that Finney is mining a significant number of block rewards.

In fact, our analysis found that 1NChf is linked to approximately 36 block rewards that our tools could find, and each reward discovered is related to Finney’s mining period. 1NChf is also associated with a large number of coinbase rewards that our team had yet to discover. Further investigation revealed that 1NChf is connected to a large sum of block rewards that were sent out in batches of thousands of BTC on June 14, 2011, around 5 a.m. (ET). Some of Finney’s alleged blocks were also moved in April 2013, according to findings from our onchain investigation.

A number of consolidated transactions are associated with a Bitstamp.net deposit address, and some of the associated funds were also sent to a Mt Gox address. Blocks associated with Onesignature’s 1NChf include blocks 78, 320, 329, 357, 361, 372, 407, 413, 419, 490, 528, 567, 596 and 651. Blocks associated with blocks all the way up to 1NChf blocks 1,7,5 7,828 , and quite possibly even higher.

All of the blocks linked to Onesignature’s 1NChf are related to blocks apparently linked to Hal Finney, and none of the linked blocks match the Patoshi block pattern, meaning that 1NChf and block 1018 are not a Satoshi block. It is well understood that Nakamoto may have mined between 700,000 to 1.1 million BTC, but what is often misunderstood is that this stash is not consolidated.

While analyzing the first 1025 mined BTC blocks, the data shows that almost every block that Nakamoto mined is unused, except for the block 9 transactions. After the five transactions from block 9, there is 18.43 BTC in the wallet, and some of the funds originate from dust transactions. It is not entirely clear why Onesignature shared the message and signature on November 26. Some said it was a “flex” and some claimed the signature thread could have been faked. A user on the Bitcointalk.org post called “franky1” said that this was probably the case, and that signature signatures “can also be ‘spoofed'”.

There has also been speculation that the 1NChf and block 1018 address could have been bought by someone at a later date. People have been known to search for older addresses to buy, and these solicitations have been spotted on Reddit and bitcointalk.org. Whatever the case may be, the 1NChf and block 1.018 address are associated with some very special transactions, and mined blocks quite possibly linked to Finney.

The computer scientist, Hal Finney, is revered by many in the Bitcoin community, and he died after suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) complications in August 2014. The news follows the crypto community asking Twitter owner Elon Musk to preserve Finney’s Twitter account after Musk said Twitter plans to purge 1.5 billion inactive Twitter names. While Finney denied that he was Bitcoin’s creator before his passing, many members of the crypto community wholeheartedly believe that he was the creator. Our onchain analysis says nothing, but the onchain links and heuristics connect to the 1NChf and block 1018 address, and Hal Finney’s mined bitcoin and associated transactions.

Joshua Redman assisted with reporting and contributed research for this article.

What do you think of the connections between the 1NChf and block 1018 address and the apparent blocks and transactions associated with Hal Finney? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news editor at Bitcoin.com News and a financial technology journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.